Ally Carter

Ally Carter

Ally Carter is the pen name of Sarah Leigh Fogleman, born January 1, 1974, an American author of young adult fiction and adult novels. She came to wide reader attention in the mid-2000s and 2010s, a period in which her book series about spies, thieves, politics, and hidden identities found a steady place in young adult fiction. Carter chose her pen name to separate the books she would write as Ally Carter from her other literary work. The surname “Carter” had a practical reason too: she selected it so her novels would sit near those of fellow adult-fiction novelist Jennifer Crusie on bookstore and library shelves.

Before her fiction career took shape, Carter studied agricultural economics, graduating from Oklahoma State University in 1997. She went on to earn an M.A. at Cornell University in Agricultural Resource and Managerial Economics. In her free time, she began writing adult novels. Cheating at Solitaire was published on December 6, 2005, followed by Learning to Play Gin on November 7, 2006. That mix of disciplined study, outside work, and early adult fiction formed the background from which her young adult career soon grew.

Carter’s first young adult novel was I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You, the opening book of the Gallagher Girls series. It tells the story of a girl at a prestigious spy school who falls for a normal boy who does not know who she really is. The book was selected for the Texas Lone Star reading list for 2007–2008. Its sequel, Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy, was released in the United States on October 2, 2007, and spent ten weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. The series continued through Don’t Judge a Girl by Her Cover, Only the Good Spy Young, Out of Sight, Out of Time, and the final book, United We Spy, published on September 24, 2013.

Her next major young adult series began with Heist Society, released February 9, 2010. Separate from the Gallagher Girls books, it follows Kat, a girl whose family business is thievery, as she tries to save her father after he is suspected of stealing a mafia boss’s paintings. Heist Society was selected for the Texas Lone Star reading list for 2011. Carter followed it with Uncommon Criminals in 2011 and Perfect Scoundrels in 2013. She also connected her spy and thief stories in Double Crossed: A Spies and Thieves Story, a crossover novella tied to both series.

Carter later wrote the Embassy Row series, beginning with All Fall Down, published January 20, 2015, about Grace Blakley, who is forced to live with her grandfather on Embassy Row in Valencia after the secretive death of her mother. See How They Run followed on December 22, 2015, and Take the Key and Lock Her Up closed the trilogy on December 27, 2016. Her other works include Not If I Save You First, Dear Ally, How Do You Write a Book?, The Blonde Identity, and The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year. She also moved into middle grade fiction with Winterborne Home for Vengeance and Valor, released March 3, 2020.

Across Carter’s books, readers meet students, spies, thieves, presidents’ children, Secret Service families, orphans, and young people trying to read the secrets around them. Her work is best known for placing ordinary feelings inside high-stakes situations: friendship, family, fear, trust, and the need to know who is telling the truth. That is why her words continue to matter to her readers. They speak in the language of missions and mysteries, but they often turn on something simple and human: the wish to be known, and the courage to act when the truth is hidden.